You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
In October 2009 the UK Energy Research Centre released an indepth report on Peak Oil. In this episode of the Technosanity Podcast we go over several articles discussing the report.
This shows the rate of oil discovery over the years, and shows that the peak of oil discovery occurred in the early 1960's. The lack of discovering oil is not due to a lack of searching, it is due to a lack of finding. The lack of finding new significant oil discoveries implies strongly that the fossil oil resources on this planet have all been tapped out.
The important wedges in this chart are "Crude oil - fields yet to be developed" and "Crude oil - fields yet to be found". Looking at the chart it appears the IEA expects on the order of 40 million barrels/day will come from those two sources. The first, fields yet to be developed, is oil that's known to exist but hasn't had infrastructure installed to extract the oil. The fields yet to be developed require extensive investment to install that infrastructure.
The fields yet to be found simply aren't known yet. Where are they? We don't know. The IEA is putting a lot of credence in the wish or hope or expectation that those fields will be found. Maybe they'll be found, maybe not.
There needs to be a long lead time to install the infrastructure - something like 10 years to build out an oil field full of oil derricks etc.
The UKERC study warns that the world society will have to find 64 million barrels/day in production by 2030 to replace the decrease in production they expect by then. This is shown on the above chart. But it's not clear where that oil will come from.
Canadian tar sands? The Canadians doubt they'll ever get more than 3 million barrels/day in production.
There are four key issues about oil production and which together point to a supply crunch sooner rather than later.
declining output: That's peak oil, once we're past the global oil peak it means oil production is declining
declining discoveries: Discoveries have been in a decline since the early 60's, it means discoveries do not match the rate of use, and that we're due to run out no matter what
increasing demand: Population increases and other factors mean continuing demand increases
insufficient projects in the pipeline: Without oil infrastructure projects to exploit the known fields, the oil production capacity cannot increase even with fields we know about
Reflections from ASPO: Contradiction, EROI, and Future Energy Supplies is a look back at the recent conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He talks at length about Energy Return on Investment (EROI) in regard to some claims about "Shale Gas" resources. Someone claims there's 200+ years of natural gas available from Shale Gas. However what's missing from that claim is the EROI of extracting that gas, and if it requires a lot of energy to extract natural gas from shale then is it worthwhile to do so?
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
The World Energy Outlook is a yearly publication from the International Energy Agency giving the official projection of the future energy outlook. They just released the 2008 report and there are a couple slide decks available giving some hints of what is contained in the report.
World primary energy demand in the reference scenario - they say it's "unsustainable" without explaining why. World energy demand expands by 45% between now and 2030, a very rapid rise, an average rate of increase of 1.6% per year, with coal accounting for more than a third of the overall rise.
Demand for coal has been growing faster than any other energy source & is projected to account for more than a third of incremental global energy demand to 2030
World oil production by source is very scary. The IEA figures show a decline in crude oil production from the currently producing fields begining in 2008. er.. That decline has already begun? There is a growing gap in production of the currently producing fields and their claimed future oil production. What makes up that gap is crude oil from fields that are yet to be developed, and this includes use of enhanced oil recovery techniques. They further explain that 64 million barrels per day of capacity needs to be installed between 2007 and 2030, which is six times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia. From where will the money come to pay for this infrastructure even if the oil is there to fill the demand?
97% of the projected increase in emissions between now & 2030 comes from non-OECD countries –three-quarters from China, India & the Middle East alone
OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto a 450-ppm trajectory,
even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero
These last two slides show that the problem is coming from the developing countries, primarily China and India. They are of course where the hugest quantity of industrialization is occuring.
World primary energy demand in the reference scenario - they say it's "unsustainable" without explaining why. World energy demand expands by 45% between now and 2030, a very rapid rise, an average rate of increase of 1.6% per year, with coal accounting for more than a third of the overall rise.
Demand for coal has been growing faster than any other energy source & is projected to account for more than a third of incremental global energy demand to 2030
World oil production by source is very scary. The IEA figures show a decline in crude oil production from the currently producing fields begining in 2008. er.. That decline has already begun? There is a growing gap in production of the currently producing fields and their claimed future oil production. What makes up that gap is crude oil from fields that are yet to be developed, and this includes use of enhanced oil recovery techniques. They further explain that 64 million barrels per day of capacity needs to be installed between 2007 and 2030, which is six times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia. From where will the money come to pay for this infrastructure even if the oil is there to fill the demand?
97% of the projected increase in emissions between now & 2030 comes from non-OECD countries –three-quarters from China, India & the Middle East alone
OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto a 450-ppm trajectory,
even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero
These last two slides show that the problem is coming from the developing countries, primarily China and India. They are of course where the hugest quantity of industrialization is occuring.
Current energy trends are patently unsustainable —socially, environmentally, economically
Oil will remain the leading energy source but...
-- The era of cheap oil is over, although price volatility will remain
-- Oilfield decline is the keydeterminant of investment needs
-- The oil market is undergoing major and lasting structural change, with national companies in the ascendancy
To avoid "abrupt and irreversible" climate change we need a major decarbonisation of the world’s energy system
-- Copenhagen must deliver a credible post-2012 climate regime
-- Limiting temperature rise to 2°C will require significant emission reductions in allregions & technological breakthroughs
-- Mitigating climate change will substantially improve energy security
The present economic worries do not excuse back-tracking or delays in taking action to address energy challenges
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
The World Energy Outlook is a yearly publication from the International Energy Agency giving the official projection of the future energy outlook. They just released the 2008 report and there are a couple slide decks available giving some hints of what is contained in the report.
World primary energy demand in the reference scenario - they say it's "unsustainable" without explaining why. World energy demand expands by 45% between now and 2030, a very rapid rise, an average rate of increase of 1.6% per year, with coal accounting for more than a third of the overall rise.
Demand for coal has been growing faster than any other energy source & is projected to account for more than a third of incremental global energy demand to 2030
World oil production by source is very scary. The IEA figures show a decline in crude oil production from the currently producing fields begining in 2008. er.. That decline has already begun? There is a growing gap in production of the currently producing fields and their claimed future oil production. What makes up that gap is crude oil from fields that are yet to be developed, and this includes use of enhanced oil recovery techniques. They further explain that 64 million barrels per day of capacity needs to be installed between 2007 and 2030, which is six times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia. From where will the money come to pay for this infrastructure even if the oil is there to fill the demand?
97% of the projected increase in emissions between now & 2030 comes from non-OECD countries –three-quarters from China, India & the Middle East alone
OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto a 450-ppm trajectory,
even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero
These last two slides show that the problem is coming from the developing countries, primarily China and India. They are of course where the hugest quantity of industrialization is occuring.
World primary energy demand in the reference scenario - they say it's "unsustainable" without explaining why. World energy demand expands by 45% between now and 2030, a very rapid rise, an average rate of increase of 1.6% per year, with coal accounting for more than a third of the overall rise.
Demand for coal has been growing faster than any other energy source & is projected to account for more than a third of incremental global energy demand to 2030
World oil production by source is very scary. The IEA figures show a decline in crude oil production from the currently producing fields begining in 2008. er.. That decline has already begun? There is a growing gap in production of the currently producing fields and their claimed future oil production. What makes up that gap is crude oil from fields that are yet to be developed, and this includes use of enhanced oil recovery techniques. They further explain that 64 million barrels per day of capacity needs to be installed between 2007 and 2030, which is six times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia. From where will the money come to pay for this infrastructure even if the oil is there to fill the demand?
97% of the projected increase in emissions between now & 2030 comes from non-OECD countries –three-quarters from China, India & the Middle East alone
OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto a 450-ppm trajectory,
even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero
These last two slides show that the problem is coming from the developing countries, primarily China and India. They are of course where the hugest quantity of industrialization is occuring.
Current energy trends are patently unsustainable —socially, environmentally, economically
Oil will remain the leading energy source but...
-- The era of cheap oil is over, although price volatility will remain
-- Oilfield decline is the keydeterminant of investment needs
-- The oil market is undergoing major and lasting structural change, with national companies in the ascendancy
To avoid "abrupt and irreversible" climate change we need a major decarbonisation of the world’s energy system
-- Copenhagen must deliver a credible post-2012 climate regime
-- Limiting temperature rise to 2°C will require significant emission reductions in allregions & technological breakthroughs
-- Mitigating climate change will substantially improve energy security
The present economic worries do not excuse back-tracking or delays in taking action to address energy challenges
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
Matt Simmons is Chairman of Simmons & Company International, a specialized energy investment banking firm. Mr. Simmons' recently published book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy has been listed on the Wall Street Journal's best-seller list. He has also published numerous energy papers for industry journals and is a frequent speaker at government forums, energy symposiums and in board rooms of many leading energy companies around the world. Mr. Simmons is married and has five daughters. His hobbies include watercolors, cooking, writing and travel.
His presentation is to warn of a 'run on the bank' as it applies to oil supplies. He warns of how this can cause a major disruption very quickly and which is a gravely serious problem. There's an analogy to how quickly the financial system melted down.
The meltdown demonstrated various flaws in the financial system which had been built. The lack of regulation, the high leverage figures, it all made for a nonresiliant system which collapsed like a house of cards. There was an illusion that the bigger the financial institution the more it was too big to fail, but we saw giants fall.
Risk is a very real thing. Leverage can be dangerous. Audited financial numbers do not always represent genuine reality.
In the oil industry there is even less knowledge about the true situation. In the financial system there is regulation and required disclosures, even as much of that system has been deregulated. In the oil industry there is no regulation, there is no federal reserve, no watchdogs, etc.
Just like the quick collapse of the financial system, can the oil industry also go through a quick collapse and what is the effect if it does? The question to be concerned over is how resiliant is the oil delivery system to disruption. How easily can oil supplies be disrupted? How much cushion is in the system to even out disruptions? What alternatives do we have if oil supply is disrupted to us? What is the effect on our daily life?
The system collapsing means we could still have oil in the ground but have a society unable to function to the level required to deliver it to market as a finished product.
Energy Oxymorons:
"We need Energy independence" -- 100% impossible to create
"Technology is a game changer" -- Technologies have zero impact on these risks
"Drill our way out of this mess" -- No spare rigs and no places to drill where oil can be retrieved easily
"Energy system is efficient and transparent" -- Much hidden data rather than the great transparency of the financial system
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
Q&A session with Ken Verosub and Jeremy Gilbert immediately following the presentations they gave and which were broadcast in immediately prior Technosanity Podcast episodes.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
A presentation at ASPO-USA 2008 by Mr. Jeremy J Gilbert, Managing Director, Barrelmore Ltd Jeremy Gilbert. Jeremy is the recently retired Chief Petroleum Engineer from British Petroleum (BP) where he was responsible for the company's worldwide petroleum engineering performance and associated research and development program. He joined BP in 1964.
His topic is a general overview of Peak Oil, specifically focusing on why it is time for America to wake up to Peak Oil. There have been a series of wake up calls, but has much changed?
While America has slept on: 2001: Discovery rates continue decades-long fall; Calculations suggest reserves can’t meet demand projections; Some recognition of political, investment risk in developing resources. 2008: No improvement in resource situation; New, more accurate, calculations of supply define earlier and clearer peak; Political will to increase supply clearly absent; prices not stimulating investment to increase supply
There are three problems: Geology, Investment, Policy of main producers. These, taken together, make the future of oil very difficult
Why are there still political leaders like Newt Gingrich or Henry Kissinger continuing to say there is no problem.
It's not a problem which higher oil prices will fully solve. According to these leaders or to most economists it is a simple problem of supply and demand. Higher demand will cause a higher price and it will do two things, incentivize customers to cut back, and incentivize energy producing countries to look for more oil or to use alternative methods. But this ignores a deeply serious problem, that in oil field after oil field it has been observed that oil production reaches a peak at the midway point, and then inevitably goes into a production decline. No amount of money will change the issue that the planet cannot provide more oil.
Specialist in paleomagnetism of sediments, the history of the geomagnetic field. He presents an introductory lecture in Petroleum Geology giving an overview of how geology & biology came together to create the gift of oil.
For the planet to create oil requires that a quantity of dead sea organisms get trapped beneath a sandy "reservoir rock" by a solid "cap rock". The decay of those sea organisms becomes oil. It takes special conditions to do this and geologists have pretty much mapped out the planet for these resources.
A salt dome is one common trap for oil to form in. And it's the easiest to find. Salt domes produce localized gravity or magnetic deviations and in some cases you can simply fly over them and see them.
Generally geologists study the subsurface conditions using "Reflector Seismology". The modern technique uses a 'thumper truck' which bang the ground real hard, and then "geophones" are used to pick up reflected sound. The pattern of reflections tells them a lot about subsurface conditions. A similar method is used at sea, with a ship towing geophones through the water.
They're able to gather 2-D and 3-D pictures of subsurface conditions which make for interesting maps of what had previously been mountain ranges, coastal planes, ocean floors, etc.
The history of an individual well is a play in three acts. Act one is the initial discovery, drilling, and development of the oil field. Act 2 is a long plateau of extracting oil. Act three is a diminishment with an inevitable decline in oil extraction.
The model behind peak oil comes from taking the production curves of a group of oil fields .. and summing them together. For example take all the fields in a given region or country, sum their production curves, and it comes close to a bell curve. M. King Hubbert put this model together.
Hubbert's prediction for U.S. oil production was made in 1956. He had the distinction of being very close to the actual results.
Discoveries lead production. Because it takes 10 or more years to develop an oil field into production, the rate of discoveries is a predictor for future oil availability. The rate of oil discoveries peaked in the early 1960's and new oil field discoveries has been in a decline ever since. If there are little or no new oil field discoveries then ultimately oil production has to decline as the existing fields peter out.
Newt Gingrich's "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" plan is shown as an example of poppycock solutions being pushed.
Finding or getting to the new oil is not easy or cheap. Offshore oil rigs cost over $1 billion apiece.
Finding big fields is unlikely. Oil company geologists have been all over the planet and their continual quest for new oil still hasn't reversed the decline in oil discoveries.
Even if new fields were to be drilled it takes 10-20 or more years to bring a field online. If we enter a decline in oil production soon, then new fields will only help in 2020 or further into the future.
The U.S. has 20 billion bbl of oil reserves. Total U.S. daily consumption in 2005 was 20.7 million per day, and we import 11.7 per day. That's approx 7 years of supply.
Major crisis due in 2015ish perhaps. 2008+7=2015. The U.S. oil production is going to be declining and the ratio of imports to usage will simply be ever-increasing. As the ratio becomes higher it makes the U.S. economy weaker and weaker, and the U.S. ever more desparate for oil.
But this guys presentation is only one set of figures. The USGS and others have different projections of future oil. They're claiming a peak further out into the future than ASPO projections say.
Another aspect is it isn't just a U.S. problem. Other countries are in on this. In particular the former-3rd-world countries which are industrializing mainly China and India are increasing their ratio of energy use. Globalization of production makes for higher transportation costs, and higher fuel usage. From that viewpoint also, in about 7 years demand for oil will exceed maximum total oil production.
Oil geologist and other work in the oil industry in the Middle East, former Soviet Union, West Aftrica, etc. Currently working as a consultant with one contract being Toyota. Toyota had studied and internalized Peak Oil long ago, and 6 yrs later developed the Prius.
OPEC countries are the major oil producers. They produce 43% of world oil, and this is growing. They have a dilemna about investing in more production capacity. They are being asked to make more investment but they did so in the 1980's only to see demand dry up. They are reluctant to make more investments which will sit idle.
Venezuela & Iran & Iraq are a bloc of OPEC which want high prices. Many countries, especially middle east, see their oil as a National Heritage which they can leave to their grand-children. If they use it all up doing production at the highest rate possible then their National Heritage will be gone. Hence the middle east countries are likely to limit oil production for this reason.
OPEC exploration success peaked 40 years ago. In general there has been little success with oil exploration for a very very very long time (40 years). The argument is there are no major oil fields left to find.
He showed several charts of all the liquid fuels. The "liquids model" includes all forms of liquid fuels, including liquified natural gas, biofuels, tar sands, etc. Everything but crude oil is a miniscule slice compared to what crude oil supplies. For these other sources to replace crude oil is a huge leap to accomplish.
There was a price floor of $20/bbl which is the amount Saudi Arabia required to run their country. In 2002 the oil prices began to rise. Around that time the 'spare capacity' started peaking (production infrastructure was running full bore). This year more investment in Saudi Arabia infrastructure meant there's now more capacity and the price began to drop.
"Spare Capacity" is the amount of production capacity your infrastructure can do at maximum above what the current production rate is. That is, it's the amount that production can be increased. Too much spare capacity and prices are low, whereas too little spare capacity leads to high oil prices and demand destruction. "Demand destruction" means people being priced out of the market and looking for alternatives.
Components of future crude oil production:- 1 trillion barrels claimed in IHS databases, 445 billion barrels in Tar Sands, unknown further amounts from future exploration and enhanced oil recovery
The USGS has estimates which indicate there are future large discoveries to be made. A big question about the future of oil is the amount of future oil field discoveries. Will there be few discoveries or large discoveries? If there are large discoveries then the oil peak is pushed into the future, but if there are few discoveries then the oil peak is closer at hand.
His organization believes the USGS is incorrect and that there will be few new discoveries and no large new discoveries.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
Republished from http://www.ecoshock.org/2008/08/peak-oil-and-media.html -- a panel discussion about Peak Oil and its coverage in the Media. What we can do. Vancouverpeakoil.org presents a panel of 5 journalists: Rex Weyler, Barbara Jaffe, Charlie Smith, Sara Robinson and Alex Smith. How to organize, use media, bypass the mainstream.
It is production that has peaked. It doesn't matter if there are trillions of barrels of oil left, what matters is to get that oil and bring it to market. There are only a couple rigs capable of drilling oil in the Arctic and it costs $1billion apiece to build new oil rigs. Somehow tapping Arctic oil would require building new rigs, new oil pipelines, etc, and is there money to do all the required investment? Or even is new oil something we want to invest in, given the negative environmental impact.
Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is another factor.. The peak net EROI occurred 30 years ago. Deposits like the tar sands have an EROI of 1:1 meaning you extract the same energy from the tar sands that you put in. It's not profitable by any measure yet they're committing ecological catastrophes in the name of mining it. And it requires government subsidy to even get what little profit there is.
Price isn't determined, any more, by the old style price/demand equations. Price isn't being set by the world market. Instead it is access. The Iraq war is being fought to establish access. The term is "off-take deals" referring to special deals like "We'll give you $n billion and take everything in sight". The Chinese especially are doing this, rather than doing war. Resources controlled by off-take deals never get to market and the price is not the market price but whatever was negotiated in the deal.
The strength of empires has been determined repeatedly by the energy resources. The most recent was England whose strength came from their coal deposits. When their coal became eclipsed by American coal, they were eclipsed, and again when Americans discovered oil, that doubly eclipsed the British Empire.
We're talking about a finite resource and the math isn't very simple. A great analogy was made to what happens if you repeatedly take food out of a refrigerator. Eventually you run out and go to the store to buy more. In this case the refrigerator is the oil deposits, but there is no store to go to.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
Rebroadcast from ifyoulovethisplanet.org:- Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear and former director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, illuminates the operation, disrepair and vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power plants. This episode also includes an excerpt from the 1983 Oscar-winning documentary, If You Love This Planet, which features Dr. Caldicott giving a lecture about the risks and consequences of nuclear war.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
Rebroadcast from ifyoulovethisplanet.org:- David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the public health dangers of the 104 aging nuclear power plants in the United States. Hear about near-melt-downs, how terrorists could easily crash planes into the planes or sabotage them from the inside, and how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fails to ensure community safety. Also includes a short excerpt of a lecture by Dr. Caldicott about the Nuclear Age from If You Love This Planet (1983 Academy Award-winning documentary) with narration from U.S. nuclear propaganda films.
This is the first in a series of broadcasts from Dr. Helen Caldicott. As they say, it is imperative that this show reach a large audience, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.
This is a very deeply interesting documentary about oil, oil supplies, the peak oil phenomenon, and the coming looming disasters which await us. The documentary is not "balanced" in that they gave no voice to the other points of view, but I suppose they think those other points of view are so far out of truth to not be worth addressing.
It starts with some assertions of truth: Oil is the Blood of the Dinosaurs, Oil is the Bloodstream of the Global Economy, Oil is the Blood of the Earth
Our arrangements of using Oil is making ourselves dependent on unstable regimes in nasty parts of the world. This isn't covered in the documentary, but I wonder how much of that instability is due to geopolitical machinations launched by the U.S. to secure the supply of oil. In any case it's obvious from the daily news that the middle east is unstable, and this is where our oil is coming from.
Assertion: It's important (to some) to keep us dependent on oil for as long as possible.
It would be in the business interests of the oil companies to keep the world dependent on oil. Clearly if the world continued its dependence on oil, the world will continue to ship money to the oil companies.
Most people have no inkling of the problem we're facing. The looming crisis includes unemployment, bankruptcy, starvation.. all this is the normal behavior of a collapsed society.
Assertion by Colin Campbell: The bulk of the worlds oil was formed in two periods of extreme global warming, 90 million years ago, and 150 million years ago.
If this is correct it makes oil a one time resource which will "never" be recreated on this planet. I'm a little surprised and will need to double check this assertion by Dr. Campbell. I always thought there was a continuing process of creating new oil, it's just that the planet takes a long time to do the process.
The work value of oil is phenomenal. Scientists can equate units of human labor to the energy, and the energy content of $1 worth of oil contains the energy equivalent to 25,000 hours of human labor. In other words the drive to my job, 10 miles, uses energy equivalent to 40,000 hours of human labor. But I know from personal experience I can ride a bicycle for that same distance, it takes me 45 minutes to ride, so there's a huge wastage of energy (40,000 hours of human labor to drive my car versus the 45 minutes of human labor it takes me to ride my bicycle).
Assertion: "Oil is our God" and that whatever religion we profess to, what we really worship is oil. Eh? What do they mean by "worship"?
70% of oil is used for transportation fuel
98% of transportation energy comes from oil
Constructing products like cars or computers or food, all these things by modern production methods require more weight in oil to produce the thingy than the thingy itself weighs. In Agriculture, for example, it's widespread to use petroleum based fertilizer. Oil makes plastics, insecticides, cosmetics and more.
"They're not making a lot of dinosaurs any more"
"Oil is a magnet for war. Oil starts wars." This speaker goes on to claim the conflict in Darfur is really about oil. There are oil supplies in southern Sudan, recently found. The Sudanese government (based in the north) wants to control the oil, and are therefore ethnically cleansing southern Sudan so the northern Sudanese can control the oil.
However this "Oil starts all wars" is a strange short-sighted statement. What about the wars which begun before Oil was discovered and brought into use by humans? There were many wars fought before the age of Oil, and clearly those wars were not fought over oil resources. However it's ominous that she claims World War I was really about oil (??Was it??). Many events in World War II were affected clearly by oil supplies, especially the German attack into Russia so that Germany could gain control of the Baku oil fields.
The first war purely about Oil was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This was absolutely and fundamentally about a dispute over an oil field.
In the more recent U.S. stupid illegal invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military did not secure the WMD areas. Supposedly the war was to control WMD's, so why didn't they secure Iraq's military depots? By not securing Iraq's depots the arms and other military supplies in there instead were looted and were made available to the insurgents, who have been blowing up U.S. troops ever since. Anyway, instead of securing the WMD depots the U.S. military secured the oil fields. Instead of securing the museums in Baghdad, the museums which contained the original records of human civilization, the museums which contained the cuniform tablets that are the earliest form of writing, instead of securing the museums which were looted, the U.S. military secured the oil ministry.
We're "Always just a drill bit aqway from a major new discovery" but it's been a very long time since the last significant discovery.
Extracting oil from tar sands and other heavy deposits, it's technically possible however it requires more energy to do so than you get from the resulting oil. The Fischer-Tropsch process was invented by German scientists before World War II and is how the Germans were able to fuel their war machine while not having a supply of oil. They converted coal into oil using this process.
Use of this process is only feasible as a last resort, because it's so expensive to do.
"Sustainable peak supply" -- what does this phrase mean?
They assert that oil allowed world human population to explode. At time of christ, 300mil, by 1700's it'd doubled to 600mil. But as soon as oil was discovered the population exploded to the 6billion it is now. They're saying population increase came as a direct result of better energy supplies. Maybe so, but weren't there other effects? Better medicine? Also better food supplies, though better food is due to better oil supply.
Richard M. Nixon: If our energy resources are sensibly developed they can provide for us for centuries to come
There's a belief many have had that oil is limitless and will always be cheap. Businesses have written into their assumptions that oil will continue being supplied as it is today. Again most people are clueless as to what's about to happen.
A 30-40-50 mile commute only makes sense when there's cheap oil. In the U.S. we've reconstructed the cities to make for 30+ mile commutes, with people driving everywhere, the cities are organized for the convenience of drivers, and there is resulting very little mass transit. This is short sighted thinking which led us to suburbanize U.S. cities under the belief that there would always be cheap oil and gas.
The U.S. evolved our cities for cars. The end of cheap oil means we'll have to rebuild our cities from scratch to a denser style. Perhaps.
e.g. riding bicycle's would be the kind of adaptation people will have to make. But most people are unwilling to ride bicycles for any serious amount of riding.
There are two options: a) militarize the taking of oil by force, b) prepare properly for the coming end of cheap oil
Technology can come to the rescue. Natural resources can be exhausted, but human ingenuity is inexhaustible.
Projections of current trends in energy demand say the human population will require 14 terawatts of energy in 2050. This is tremendous. It would require thousands of new nuclear plants (for example) and by doing this with nuclear power would mean the uranium supplies would reach their peak uranium production very quickly.
Living in the style to which we have become accustomed is not sustainable. It is going to create for us a crisis. How will we get through this?
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum production is reached. The peak oil occurs at every level, for each oil field, for each country, and for the global production. After the peak oil point is reached, the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, an energy crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically. M. King Hubbert first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His model, now called Hubbert peak theory, has since been used to predict the peak petroleum production of many other countries, and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.
The same pattern happens for other limited resources. There will be a copper peak, a coal peak, a natural gas peak, a fish peak, etc. In each case there is an increasing demand for a resource, and a fixed maximum capacity to deliver that demand, and once the capacity is reached it damages the resource such that it can no longer produce as it did before.
Oil is the most critical resource for our societies existence and it is with oil that this Peak Resource phenomenon was discovered.
Oil is the key to transportation. Current transportation technologies generally require liquid fuels, and society has chosen that the only way to get liquid fuels is to use fossil oil. The direct result of tight oil supplies will be expensive transportation, and that will contribute to several secondary results to be covered later.
The ever-increasing demand for oil partly occurs as a natural byproduct of rising population. Each person who exists is responsible for consuming resources, so of course the more people there are the more resources which are used. Another cause is a shift from manual technologies like bicycles or horse drawn carts to mechanized technologies like cars and trucks. Some countries, especially India and China, are industrializing and are causing an increased rate of demand. As countries industrialize the amount of resources consumed per person raises as well.
An interview with the authors of Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil they suggest the U.S. might become so desperate for oil they would invade Canada to get its oil. Maybe the NAFTA is at least partly due to the need to have ready access to Canadian oil.
"The likely outcome of not dealing with this issue is not an environmental catastrophe. It's an economic and social catastrophe that may leave us unable to deal with the environmental catastrophe," Richard Gilbert said in an interview. The effects brought by oil in our society are so critical and fundamental to how we live, that without cheap oil we face starvation, riots, collapsed economies, more wars, and more.
The gushers are gone - "It's the end of the Beverly Hillbillies oil. The kind of oil that you stick a hole in the ground, and it starts squirting a gusher out under its own power." - All the big discoveries have already been made. There are two peaks in oil supply, the first peak is the peak in the rate of discovery of oil, and the second peak is the peak of oil production. The peak of the discovery rate has to precede the peak of production, and the peak of oil discovery is long past.
There's more in this article but we're focused on understanding peak oil here.
As Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, said in testimony to Congress in January 2007: "The world is facing twin energy-related threats: that of not having adequate and secure supplies of energy at affordable prices and that of environmental harm caused by its use. " Not only is the supply threatened, the use of fossil fuels is threatening us all from environmental harm. The burning of fossil fuels releases poisons which directly cause a wide range of diseases. The burning of fossil fuels release greenhouse gasses which are directly causing climate change to be worse. Purchasing fossil fuels results in large capital flows into the Middle East.
"Oil supply is increasingly dominated by a small number of major producers, most of them in the Middle East" which then connects to a variety of global geopolitical manipulations. The oil industry needs to do massive investment in developing oil fields and infrastructure, a total of $4.3 trillion dollars between 2005-2030. However it is uncertain whether the key Middle East countries will actually do so, and it's possible they will deliberately keep investment lower than predicted. Why should they increase production when keeping production low keeps the price high? Or it's possible that a credit crunch might prevent producers from expanding capacity due to a lack of money to pay for the investments.
The U.S. imports more energy than the next 2 highest importers. Most of U.S. imports come from shaky or unfriendly suppliers. Many of the key suppliers are 1-2 months travel time away. There are many scenarios in which "energy" (a.k.a. oil) supplies to the U.S. can be disrupted. One of these unfriendly suppliers could turn downright nasty and cut off oil to the U.S. Or storms could wreck shipping facilities, refinery facilities. Or a war with Iran could block the mouth of the Persian Gulf, preventing shipment of oil from the Middle East.
In other words we have to be smart enough to realize the game is changing. That we can no longer continue life in the style to which we have become accustomed. We have to change our ways.
There are approximately two thoughts to how the peak oil phenomena plays out. The "sharp peak" model says production reaches a peak and rapidly declines. Nobody who has studied this carefully says we will "run out", instead the debate is in how quick is the decline. There are those who think production will, instead, "plateau" for a long time for one reason or another.
The world energy crisis is upon us. Dwindling supply and rising demand leads to a simple economics lesson, rising cost. The old equation was cheap energy lead to untold wealth. The new equation is gonna lead to a totally different world power structure.
